Poll stickers are one of the latest offerings from Instagram: they’re an interactive function within Stories that lets users and brands ask their followers a question and get feedback in real time.

How surveys work in Instagram

This is yet another Instagram feature that was inspired by trends made popular by other social media apps. From Twitter to Facebook, everyone’s realized the potential of polls. So DMs (direct messages) are no longer the only way to interact with the creator of a Story. Poll stickers let the user add a question and 2 possible answers — yes and no are the defaults. Then in addition to seeing who viewed their Story, creators can see poll responses in real time.

Marketing strategies with Instagram polls

It’s estimated that 91% of the world’s top brands trust Instagram to promote their images. Gil Eyal, founder and CEO of HYPR (a platform for influencers) claims that Instagram’s poll stickers make consumers feel more involved in decisions with big brands, whether or not the brand actually decides to act on their customers’ preferences. “Instagram’s new polling feature offers brands and Influencers a new form of social engagement,” Eyal said. “We’re seeing brands asking for feedback about products, creating engagement around topics that are in the media and conducting market research.”

We’re sold: videos are the future

Zuckerberg talked about the necessity to invest in expanding video, and to not view it only as a way to passively consume content, but rather as a means to create meaningful interactions. And poll stickers seem like a small step in that direction.

Our experience with Instagram polls has indeed shown a greater response by our followers when they saw the two choices in a video compared to a collage of two images. And just a question on its own without a visual representation of the two choices had even less of an impact.

Numbers don’t lie: Stories, videos and polls are a hit

Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, confirmed that there’s been an exponential growth of Stories following the launch of polls. “We’re going to be doing a lot more of that — more than just judging whether or not a photo is good, but getting feedback from customers and fans,” says Systrom. Certainly Chiara Ferragni — who normally doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to social advertising — could have avoided an uproar by her fans if she’d surveyed the number of cruelty-free fashionistas among her followers before donning a Louis Vuitton fur shawl.

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